Cloud buyers keeping storage sales strong

Analyst house IDC is predicting demand for public and private cloud architectures will means strong growth for storage sales.

According to a new survey, spending by public-cloud service providers will grow 23.6 per cent annually until 2015, while enterprise demand for private cloud networks will grow 28.9 per cent per annum over the same period. The sales forecasts include storage hardware, software, and professional services, and by 2015 overall storage spending should be worth $22.6 billion globally.

"Despite current economic uncertainties, IDC expects cloud service providers – both public and private – to be among the most expansive spenders on IT products and services as they continue to build out their facilities worldwide and expand their service options," said Richard Villars, vice president of storage systems and executive strategies at IDC in a statement.

The key driver will be the so-called “big data” strategies currently being put forward by Oracle, IBM, HP, Microsoft, and others. Storage vendors will need to balance providing low-cost storage hardware with higher-end data retrieval software for this sector, the analyst warns. ®